HAUNTED BY A GUNSHOT
by Ballyuk
Summary: Ill-considered actions can have disastrous consequences. Lois struggles with her thoughts and emotions, running through her mind about how her desperation for a huge scoop had put those she cared about in grave danger. Set before the last DP scene and the iconic phone booth scene in 8x19 (Stiletto).
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: I do not own the characters.

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 **HAUNTED BY A GUNSHOT.**

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 **Chapter 1.**

"Lo-is!" The pained voice reverberated around her head as she slept. Tossing and turning on the couch for the past two hours had done nothing to silence the voice or stave off the memories of that night which continued to haunt her. How had her life come to the point where she could so readily endanger the lives of others for a front-page scoop that she herself had concocted? Was her career really worth that much to her?

 _Crashing through the skylight more than 20 feet up and having survived the landing by some miracle, Lois had rushed over to the stricken form of Jimmy Olsen. Having found Jimmy's broken camera in the parking lot outside the Ace of Clubs, she knew he was in trouble. The camera contained the photos he'd taken of Stiletto - the faux super-heroine created by Lois - and Lois had come to the club where Jimmy worked to ask him to get rid of the evidence. The city's crime kingpin Ron Milano owned the joint and if he or his goons had gotten hold of Jimmy's camera, it could spell trouble for Jimmy. Ron would want to know who the leather-clad woman in the photos was, and Lois had foolishly announced her alter ego to the heavy she'd beaten up to save Chloe the previous night. He'd gotten out and would almost certainly have talked about the asskicker who'd blindsided him that night._

 _Having earlier climbed up the fire escape to the roof, feet aching from being squeezed into ridiculously uncomfortable knee-high boots with 5-inch heels, she'd seen Jimmy through the large skylight lying there unconscious on the floor of the club's back room, and she could also see another figure on the ground being viciously kicked in the stomach before the heavy - Bruno Mannheim - pointed a gun at his head. It was Clark Kent, her best friend and reporting partner! Her phone choosing now to run out of juice, Lois knew she had to act or else Jimmy and Clark would be killed, with Milano covering up the evidence via his network of paid-off lawyers and police officers. She wasn't to know that Mannheim had murdered Milano to become the new kingpin. He was a thug who would control through violence rather than manipulation like Ron Milano. Removing her overcoat and donning her gloves and mask, she knew it was time for Stiletto to save the day for real._

 _Right now though, the voice was calling her name. "Lo-is!"_

 _She whipped herself round, startled that her name had been called out. It was Clark. He'd been lying on the floor to one side, writhing in agony. Had he broken a rib, or worse? The last time she'd seen him, he'd told her to nix her Stiletto article before it got published while he went off to investigate Ron Milano's involvement. That would explain why he was at the Ace of Clubs. He was also trying to track down Chloe's laptop which contained some sensitive information._

 _BANG!_

 _Before she knew what had happened, Clark had dived in front of her at the exact moment a shot had been fired. The crackle in the air from the gunshot was unmistakable. Almost in slow motion, she watched him slump to the floor hard, blood gushing and soaking into his shirt as he lay there, not moving. He'd taken the hit._

 _"Clark!" she cried out, shocked._

 _She had no time to gather her wits or think about how things had gone so badly wrong, nor to check if she herself had been shot as all of a sudden, a commotion behind her forced her to toss all of those thoughts aside. Jimmy had managed to get back up, pinning Mannheim up against a filing cabinet as he fought to wrestle the gun away from the thug. Jimmy had been left severely weakened from the beating he'd been given and Lois could see he was beginning to lose this battle now. Mannheim had turned his wrist so the gun was facing Jimmy, his finger on the trigger. If he fired, Jimmy was done for as this was point blank range. She simply_ had _to intervene._

 _Looking around the room, floor strewn with counterfeit money, she spotted the empty whisky bottle on the side table. Grabbing it quickly, and with Mannheim's back to her, she swung the bottle and crashed it down on Mannheim's head in a sweeping arc. The bottle shattered into a thousand tiny pieces and she was glad the pleather gloves on her hands had protected her from the shards. Better, Jimmy was now leaning slumped against the filing cabinet bloodied, battered, bruised and worn out but thankfully still alive. Even better still, Mannheim had collapsed to the floor in a heap, unconscious and bleeding profusely from his head wound. He would not be getting up at all if Lois had any say in the matter, but she would leave that to the police._

 _What about Clark? Lois dashed over to his stricken form, tossing her gloves aside and kneeling down to cradle his face in her hands. His face sported the bruises of battle and his lip had been split open, but there was barely any response coming from him. He simply looked stunned and unable to focus. She could see where the bullet had pierced him in his side - had it hit a vital organ? The stain on his shirt was growing by the second as blood seeped through the fabric. It was serious._

 _"Clark!" she gasped, eyes cascading with tears as her friend lay there dying._

 _Clark's eyes began to cloud over as he shuddered with shallow, hacking breaths. He tried to focus on the face in front of him, willing himself to tell her what he'd kept to himself for so long and never found the courage to say._

 _"I, I, I…"His voice was strangled to little more than a desperate whisper._

 _Nothing else came out. Her face was so close to his but she heard no more sounds, just a soft exhale. If it weren't for the silence in the room, she would have missed it. She waited for him to say whatever it was he needed to say, but the sentence remained incomplete._

 _"Clark!" she begged, attempting to get Clark to look her in the eye. So many things she wanted to say but all bar uttering his name remained lodged in her throat._

 _His baby blues, still open, were gazing right at her. No, not right at her, but right through her. Had he seen something going on behind her? Training herself to divert her attention for a split second, she glanced behind her. Mannheim was still down for the count and Jimmy was leaning against the filing cabinet, hands on knees, getting his breath back. It had been a painful ordeal for him, and it was her fault he'd been put in that position._

 _But what about Clark? Clark was not moving at all, his face still in her hands. Turning back to him, she gazed into his eyes once more, desperately hoping to see signs of life. There was no expression, no emotion, nothing, only dilated pupils. Moving her fingers to find a pulse in his neck, she found none. He was not breathing. This could not be happening._

 _Clark Kent was dead._

 _He had given his life to save hers. She never got to hear what he had wanted to say, only felt his last remaining breath. She'd never got to tell him how she truly felt about him, in her own words, with no coercion from a madman with a polygraph and an electric chair, no wedding day romantic haze, and no low blood sugar-induced nightmarish acid trip to some alien planet with rivers of blood and secret portals, where she only felt secure if he was beside her._

 _Her own vision blurred as a feeling of numbness took hold of her body. Still on her knees, she could barely see through the tears streaming down her face, and barely hear anything around her, she knew what happened next would be etched into her soul until her dying day. She gently lifted Clark's lifeless form to cradle his head against her chest, moving her forehead to meet his, leaning over him. All she could do now was cry over him, her wails piercing the silence in the room._

 _"No, no, no!" she sobbed continuously, the water from her eyes spilling over Clark's motionless face, running down his cheek with his own eyes still wide open._

 _She had failed him. She had failed Jimmy. She had failed herself. And all because of some stupid need to get her name back on the front page of a stupid paper._

 _"Lo-is!"_

 _BANG!_

 _"Lo-is!"_

 _BANG._

 _"Lo-is!"_

 _BANG._

 _And like_ that _, Clark Kent was dead. The voice calling her name faded to an echo, and far from sounding like him, it sounded like a woman._

Lois' eyes flew open and she sprang upright on the couch with a loud gasp. Her flannel pajamas clung to her skin as she sat there sweating profusely. Her hair was all messed up and she was hyperventilating like an asthma sufferer desperately reaching for their inhaler. Her face was tear-streaked and it took a moment for her to focus on where she was, and who was beside her.

"Lois!" came the voice, heavy with concern.

It was Chloe. She was kneeling beside the couch having been woken by Lois' panicked scream. The clock on the side showed it had just gone 3:30 in the morning, and the twilight from outside was shining through the curtain in the living room, bathing the space in an eerie purple light.

"Chloe, wh-?" started Lois, thick with cotton mouth, heart still racing.

Chloe had placed a soothing hand on Lois' arm. "Lo, hey, you were having a nightmare."

Lois blinked herself alert, trying to make sense of it all. Yes she'd had a nightmare, and one that had pained her to her very core. It was about the death of somebody very close to her, and it had all been her fault.

"Yeah," Lois sniffled, suddenly realising that she'd been crying for real. She tried to wipe away the tears with the palms of her hands. She could feel the salty tears stinging her eyes.

"You wanna talk about it?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2.**

The two cousins sat there on the couch in the living room huddled beneath Lois' blanket, the candlelight flickering and the warmth from the fireplace filling the room gently, as they cradled cups of hot chamomile tea. Lois wasn't all that fond of tea but she recognised that she needed the calming effect of the hot elixir. Her cousin had never seen her looking so frazzled and she herself couldn't remember ever feeling this awful. The guilt was clinging to her as tightly as the black pleather outfit she'd created.

After the events of the previous night, Lois had spent the day ferreting away on her article about the nefarious activities of the Metropolis crime syndicate Intergang, which included extortion, counterfeiting and murder. Ron Milano's body had been found in a shallow grave in the woods just outside the city by a man walking his dogs. Lois wasn't doing the article to snag a front page by-line. She wanted to do the article to occupy her mind and stop herself from running away with her thoughts. As long as she didn't have a quiet moment to reflect on the events of that night, she could cope. She wanted to highlight everything that Intergang, Milano and Mannheim had been up to, but most of all, she wanted to do the article in the hope that Clark would somehow be proud of her. As thought that might in some way make up for what had happened to him because of her.

She'd sat at her desk, desperately trying to avoid looking at the empty chair at the desk opposite. Clark had been to the hospital and had told her it was a flesh wound. He'd been given time off by Tess and had been offered trauma counselling should he feel he required it. He'd declined the offer and said that he would be back the following morning after taking one day's sick leave - his first day off sick since he'd joined the paper. Tess didn't push the matter even though she was perfectly within her rights to put her foot down. Lois had not seen him since taking him to the hospital.

Overwhelmed by guilt, she'd resorted to waiting until he showed up for work. The familiar environment of the bullpen and the buzz of the workday would settle her nerves and allow her to say what needed to be said when he came back. Otherwise, she would simply want to curl up into a ball and cry herself to sleep. As un-Lois like as that might sound, it was the guilt eating her up. He had almost died because of her stupidity.

Back to the here and now, Chloe asked what had frightened Lois so much.

"Clark's going to be back in the morning you know. He's a surprisingly fast healer and it was just a straight in-out. Were you thinking about what happened?"

Lois sipped from her cup, letting the hot liquid line her throat before she deigned to offer a reply. Her eyes were still moist and she was still visibly upset, not bothering to hide the fact from Chloe.

"I keep replaying events over and over in my head, only each time, there is no happy ending. He was dead Chloe, and it was all because of me. He took that bullet for me."

Chloe didn't mention that Clark was fully healed and had been absolutely fine the moment Lois and Jimmy helped him out of that counterfeiting room. All he'd needed was to get away from the refined green meteor rock that had been stored in plastic containers and was being used in the production of the counterfeit money. Lois' own investigation for her report had determined that Intergang had been using refined green meteor rock in place of the standard ink, but she was otherwise unaware of that material's particular significance when it came to Clark's well-being. In order to reassure her upset cousin, Chloe chose to point out that Clark's actions were entirely in keeping with his character, because he was selfless to a fault.

"Lo, he would have done that for any of us because that's who he is."

Lois carried on beating herself up over it. "That is the most amazing thing anyone's ever done for me, but it was my fault for putting him and Jimmy in that position."

"True, it wasn't the wisest move on your part, but still some good came of it. The three of you managed to expose Intergang. Several big dogs are behind bars, and they'd still be out on the streets if it weren't for you."

Lois was not going to shun responsibility. "Jimmy's out of a job now thanks to me. I knew he'd been struggling after everything that had happened and I wanted to help him out. I know he still cares about you."

Jimmy's near-death experience at the wedding had brought him closer to Lois while she was with him in the Star City hospital. Lying there in his hospital bed, he'd confided his hopes and fears, and Lois started to understand what Chloe saw in him - the child-like naivety and pureness of heart that made people warm to him also underpinned a determination to make the best of any situation. Lois knew he had to make his own choices but she still wanted to look out for him, and that had remained the case even after Chloe and Jimmy's marriage had failed.

Chloe tried to maintain her composure. Her life had fallen into a tailspin pretty much ever since her wedding, and her divorce from Jimmy was close to being finalised. She still loved him and knew deep down she always would, but the scars ran deep for them both, emotionally and indeed physically, and they'd agreed to keep a distance from each other.

Lois still wasn't done with admonishing herself.

"I spent so long teaching Clark the dos and don'ts of reporting, and then I went and pulled a stunt like this. How could I be so stupid, Chlo'? I was so desperate for this interview that I made myself an outfit and gave myself an alter ego," she said, scoffing at the ridiculousness of that idea. "That's about as selfish as you can get. Why the hell would the Red-Blue Blur ever be interested in talking to me anyway?"

"Lois, you went at it head-on like you always do. Just trust me on this," Chloe insisted. "Don't try to beat yourself up too much because that will stop you from being all you can be. Look, you might not have got the reporting bug from the womb like I did, but you fell into it and took yourself to a level that I never reached. When I was you the other week, I got to see what your life was like and the esteem in which you were held. A part of me was jealous but when I took a step back, I realised I was happy for you."

"Yeah, but you would never have stooped so low. I bet even you've done some things you're not proud of, but at least they haven't resulted in a near-death experience for someone close to you."

Chloe's mood darkened at that. The same night Clark had been shot, she'd being discarding the remains of one of Intergang's goons in the dumpster behind the Talon. She'd done it to protect Davis Bloome after he'd killed the goon to protect her. She was hiding a devastating secret that had cost her a marriage and may yet cost her the people she cared most about. She might not have killed but she had blood on her hands, aiding and abetting a killer. Maybe she was beyond redemption. Despite having Lois, Clark and even Oliver Queen to talk to, having to hide as dangerous a secret as Davis Bloome being Doomsday had left her lonely and isolated. Sitting up against the dumpster that night was an all-time low for her.

"There are lots of things for which I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and change them, but life doesn't give you many second chances. You just have to make your first chance count and hope you're doing the right thing."

Was she doing the right thing by harbouring a killer in the basement of the Talon? Despite Davis' claims that Chloe's presence kept the demon at bay, it didn't change the fact that he was a killer. There was no guarantee that he wouldn't do so again, and Chloe herself could become one of his victims. Lois was still living at the Talon yet she had no idea about Davis.

Lois sat there contemplating Chloe's words for a minute before she spoke up, going back to her nightmare. "It felt so real, like I was actually living it. I don't know what I'd do with myself if it had happened."

As the calming effects of the chamomile began to take hold, Lois' sniffling eased away. It was her absolute despair in the nightmare that had thrown her for a loop. Of course she assumed that she would be very upset if something like that had happened to Clark, but it was the sense of her world completely caving in that occupied her thoughts now. In the nightmare, there was numbness but at the same time, a feeling that part of her had died with him. And that brought about another revelation. All those feelings for Clark she'd attempted to brush aside after what had happened at Chloe's wedding were clearly still very strong, and perhaps getting stronger. She did not want to lose him.

The Red-Blue Blur had remained an elusive figure, and one she would continue to try and track down. She didn't feel she wanted to talk to him just to get an exclusive though - it was about something else. During her ill-fated stint as Stiletto, Lois had come to understand the need for heroes to conceal their identity and remain in the shadows in order to protect those they cared about. That could mean keeping everyone in the dark about this other side to them, and that had to be a lonely existence. Lois figured that the Red-Blue Blur must be a lonely figure, carrying out these good deeds to retain some sort of connection and sense of belonging. If she could reach out to this anonymous Good Samaritan, maybe she could convince him that rather than being a reporter chasing a story, she could be a confidant and somebody he could talk to in order to stave off his loneliness.

Be that as it may, there was somebody else who'd stepped in at the last moment to put his own life on the line to protect and save her. He deserved more than a little recognition because in her eyes, he was no less of a hero than the anonymous Red-Blue Blur. The Good Samaritan was a hero for everybody, but Clark Kent was a hero for _her_. She needed to let him know that.

"I've spent so long chasing a hero that's always out of reach, and yet I had a bona fide hero sitting across the desk from me every day," she confessed.

Chloe smiled at that account. _If only you knew, Lois!_ She pulled Lois in for a hug, and the two sat side by side, heads touching, as they continued to sip their drinks. For Chloe, helping Lois get her worries off her chest helped her to compartmentalise her own current issues. For Lois, it felt as though a huge weight had been lifted.

Lois endeavoured to face the day head-on as she normally would. If Clark didn't wish to speak to her after what had happened, she would just have to live with that. There was a small part of her brain telling her that Clark was not the type to bear grudges, and he'd always look for the best in people even after they'd made bad choices. That small voice gave her hope. To try and smooth things along, she would go in extra early and do some of his copy duties so he'd have an easy day. She would also buy him breakfast as a token gesture. After all, somebody had once said the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach. It was corny and he might even laugh at her, but that was better than the cold shoulder. It was worth a shot.

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 **FIN.**


End file.
